Field of the Invention
This invention relates to digital rights management (DRM) systems, and in particular, it relates to user access control method and module for DRM systems.
Description of Related Art
Documents traditionally available only in hard copies are increasingly also available in digital copies. In fact many documents nowadays are prepared, generated, stored, distributed, accessed, read or otherwise used electronically in digital file formats such as the Portable Document Format (PDF).
With the wide use of digital file formats in document processing, digital rights management (DRM) systems are increasing implemented to control user access and prevent unauthorized use of digital documents.
The rights involved in using a digital document may include the right to view (or “read”) the digital document, the right to edit (or “write”) the digital document, the right to print the digital document in hard copies, the right to copy the digital document, etc. A user may access a digital document by acquiring (or being assigned) one or more of these rights, and any of the acquired or assigned rights may be later revoked for various reasons.
DRM systems are generally implemented for managing users' rights to the digital documents stored in the systems. Current DRM systems are designed with a document centric rights management approach. The core design principle of such systems is that each digital document is associated with a single one of many “policies” which are centered around documents rather than users.
There is a need to provide a new approach for DRM systems that can be more flexible and adaptable to real life situations and needs in digital document access and usage by everyday users.